Sunday, October 15, 2006

Vinyl Rips: Shoreline, Ariel Pink and OCS

Here's some notable cuts from some recently released vinyl rips...

"Kings" - Shoreline from From Eden, Home and In-Between 10" EP... Shoreline kinda came late to the neo-hippy folk party but they're welcome anyways. The band consists of a Brit and an I-Tye -- he plays pretty acoustic guitar, she sings pretty over that and then they invite some of their friends who bring in vocal harmonies, bozoukas, xylophones, piano and double bass. Iron & Wine, Crosby & Nash and a little The Magic Numbers come to mind as "Kings" attests. The songs were multi-tracked (that is recorded one track at a time) but the result sounds cohesive nonetheless. These songs come off a 5-song 10" from Yesternow Recordings. The record includes few liner notes so you have to find the band's website to get more info. Here's the page they put up for Kings and here's their myspace in case you want to stream it and some others. The band news promises to turn into a live outfit so I suspect this isn't the last we have heard of them.

"Hey Kid" from OCS 3 LP - Call it the reverse Neil Young syndrome. Hot underground heavy metal / hardcore / punk guitarist does a more mellow side-project. Emil Amos (Grails -> Holy Sons) and Ben Chasny (Comets on Fire -> Six Organs of Admittance) are some famous and successful examples. John Dwyer of the Coach Whips also has a side-project called either OCS or Ohsees (standing for Orange County Sound) that slows things down and toys out the guitar. This was previously released as a part of a two-CD package called OCS3 and OCS4 but Yik-Yak Records have re-released just the OCS3 as vinyl. I hadn't heard the CD pack but I imagine that two CDs of this might have been too much. If you have the Jana Hunter CD and the two most recent M. Ward CDs you'll probably kinda dig this although as a whole it didn't capture my attention for the entire record. Select cuts, though, make the grade. "Hey Kid" brings back the evil Manson side of hippy folk now while Devendra has gotten all gooey and good. Love that line "I will destroy you, even though your parents begged me not to." You can also download "Second Date" from Narnack records. The vinyl (via Yik-Yak) is not 180 gram but it comes in a cool shopping bag colored package with what appears to be a silkscreened vampire ape image. The insert is super large and includes all the lyrics and other fun stuff about the reccid. And you can buy this LP here ...

"The Bottom" from Ariel Pink's My Molly EP. Ariel let a small-ish new vinyl company put out this EP of some of his early 4-track work (I'm thinking 97-98 vintage). This includes a cover of a rare Smiths track ("The Night Has Opened My Eyes") that reminded how I used to like the Smiths and still hate Moz. "The Bottom" revives The Romantics red leather corpse and puts it through Pink's lo-fi bedroom shredding machine. The rest of the EP is all worthy of praise, too. Limited edition - buy it here. Pink's myspace lists all his influences from The Germs to Linda Rondstadt. Ariel is now recording under the name Ariel Rosenberg for HumanEarMusic.